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Thursday, May 14, 2015

Want to be part of a franchise?

Franchises seem to be all over the
place at the moment. I wrote about the concept recently, and I've
seen franchised books published via Amazon's new venture which
encourages the idea.

A franchise in writing isn't much
different from any other franchise – basically, it's a shared
environment where all contributors get the benefit of that known
arena, but run their own business. Think Macdonalds.

Although I don't much like the concept
of an author franchising his/herself, such as James Patterson,
there's no doubt it works. I have less objection to something like
the Star Wars franchise. It's a bit like licensed fan fiction. You
set your story in the Star Wars universe, you can use the iconic
characters who appear in the movies, along with the alien species,
planets, hardware etc etc and then you can introduce your own
characters and stories. The Star Wars extended universe has been
hugely successful and is undoubtedly why Star Wars is still a
phenomenon forty years after the first movie (then entitled just
“Star Wars” - A New Hope was added later) exploded on the movie
screens.

When the credits finally rolled on
Return of the Jedi I wasn't the only one mourning a loss. It
was over. No more star destroyers, no more derring-do amongst the
stars. I felt bereft, as though a part of my life had come to an end.
I imagine the fan fic started almost after the first movie finished.
Fan fic web sites popped everywhere. Then in the early nineties
Timothy Zahn, already an established author in his own right, came up
with his Thrawn trilogy. Han, Leia, Luke etc
were back with a new enemy. Although it took me a bit of time to get
over Thrawn replacing that wonderful arch-villain Darth Vader, Grand
Admiral Thrawn soon became one of my favourite characters of all
time. There again, I wasn't the only one. Thrawn pops up in Star Wars
franchises several times. He plays an important bit part in Tatooine
Ghost, for instance. Zahn himself was forced to write several
more Thrawn books, one being Outbound Flight, where we meet a
young Thrawn before he is forced to move his considerable talents to
the Empire.

There are pros and cons to any
franchise. On the one hand you have the advantage of an established
universe, and an existing pantheon of characters. It's much easier to
create convincing background. On the other hand, that's a limitation.
You need to be careful that when you use established characters that
they act as they should/would according to the canon. Apart from
that, the sky's the limit. Looking back at the Star
Wars expanded universe, several hundred books have been written,
as well as a bunch of other tie-ins.

The point is IT WORKS. Amazon is trying
to harness the power of the franchise through its KindleWorlds.
Well known crime writer Toby Neal is just one of many who have participated with her Hawaiian crime
series, and already there are eight new stories, written by different
authors, using Toby's characters.

Today in a Facebook group I came across
a group called the Dryden Experiment. This one is a Scifi universe,
and it's inviting participation from writers of science fiction
romance of any heat level willing to write as part of a creative commons project. So it's a franchise of sorts. They have a Facebook
group, and a website. You write a story set in that universe and it becomes part of the ongoing canon (if it's good enough - there are hints of some sort of quality control) so your work can be used and built on by others.

It's not for everyone. Some authors
couldn't possibly consider the constraints imposed by such a
structure. Then again, it didn't hold Zahn back. Apart from a host of
Star Wars novels, he's written plenty of other books. I could mention Sean Williams and Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote for Star Wars. The huge advantage, of course, is marketing. If you're part of a greater whole, if the greater whole is recognised, your chances of being recognised increase enormously.

2 comments:

Hey Greta. I'm Joel Stottlemire, Chief Editor of the Dryden Experiment. I wanted to stop by and say thank for the comments. We aren't for everyone but we do build and grow as a group thanks to our shared reach.

The cannon question isn't so much about quality, though we do encourage quality. We are more concerned that an author will write something that violates the core tenant of our shared history. No story, for example, would be considered cannon if it involved destruction of the Earth in the 22nd century. Our history has the Earth existing for at least several thousand years after that. Otherwise, people are pretty much free to write what they want. We love to work together and are eager to support the work of others.

I also wanted to leave folks a way to get hold of me if they have questions. Our main email is drydenexperiment@yahoo.com and I'm the poor sucker that checks it.

Please feel free to drop me a line if you have questions or have work you'd like me to look at.

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